Wilderness Interface Zone

Beside the bank where black swans often lie
in twos, beneath wild fruit trees near the stream
where Chinese geese move single file across
the water like a strand of flags that gleam

with little angled feathertips of light,
I heard her speak. It was a quiet voice,
like summer clouds that weep along low hills
of poplar groves then peacefully rejoice

in finding laurel blooms. A haunting voice,
sifting across another time, to leave
a secret song before the night was due
and tuck it into twilight’s bell-shaped sleeve

where it might dissipate. Beside the bank,
where black swans often lie in twos, a word
clings to an apple on the bough. Sometimes
when breezes lift the branches it is heard.

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Karen Kelsay is a native Californian who grew up near the Pacific.  As a child, she spent most of her weekends on a boat. She has three children, two cats and extended family in England, where she loves to visit. Karen is a Pushcart Prize nominee and the editor of Victorian Violet Press, a poetry journal. Her poems have been widely published over the past few years, and some of her recent work has appeared in The Boston Literary Review, The New Formalist, The Christian Science Monitor and The Lyric. Her first book, Collected Poems, was finished in 2008.  Since then, she has authored two chapbooks, one published by Pudding House Press and the other by Flutter Press. “Handmaidens of Spring” was first published in Munyori Poetry Journal